


Sons From the Sea

by Isis



Category: Outcast - Rosemary Sutcliff
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Character Death Fix, Found Families, Gen, Original Character(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-31
Updated: 2014-05-31
Packaged: 2018-01-27 16:09:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,147
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1716662
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Isis/pseuds/Isis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When the Hortator threw him overboard from the <i>Alcestis</i>, Jason was not, after all, dead.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sons From the Sea

**Author's Note:**

  * For [amyfortuna](https://archiveofourown.org/users/amyfortuna/gifts).



> Heartfelt thanks to my beta altri_uccelli, as usual.

_The Hortator took from the breast of his tunic the heavy key which never left its chain round his neck, and stooping, unlocked Jason's shackles. Then he stepped back, with a quick gesture towards the gunwale. The Overseer and his Second took up the dead rower between them._

_Beric never moved, never raised his eyes. He heard the splash as Jason's worn body hit the water. That was all, when a rower died at the oar; a splash, and a fresh rower shackled in his place, and the galley going on…._

He awoke, coughing. A hand smoothed his brow. A woman's voice spoke words he could not make out, and he slipped again into sleep. This time it was not the dreamless nothingness he'd startled from, but an uneasy, turbulent dream that tossed him from side to side with the rolling of his ship, then flung him beneath the waves, and when he woke again, he could feel the water on his face.

This time it was a man who spoke, in a language he did not understand. A broad-shouldered man with a thinning crown of black hair on his head, but a thick gray bush of beard on his chin; his face was dark and wrinkled with the lines of the many years he must have seen. He leaned heavily on a thick wooden stave. Behind him another shape hovered, smaller, more slender.

"I don't," he started in his own language, then coughed again. It was not quite the coughing that had plagued him before, he thought faintly. That had become as familiar as an itch or a limp; he knew it intimately, in every particular, and so he knew this was a different cough, in a throat that seemed unusually sore and roughened.

A hand held a cup to his lips. He drank the cool water greedily. "Thank you," he whispered.

The man spoke again, more slowly this time, and Jason recognized it as some Gaulish tribal language, strangely accented to his ear but similar to the common argot spoken by the rowers of the Rhenus fleet. "Thank you," he repeated in that language, and the man's face broke into a smile.

"Praise the gods, you are alive!"

"The gods, and your kind care of me," said Jason. His voice sounded a croak to his own ears. "And that of your woman," he added, for it had been a woman's hands which had held the cup he'd drunk from. 

"We are only the servants of the gods," said a woman's soft voice, and she stepped from the shadows behind the man and nodded toward Jason. Her gray hair was tied in a knot at her neck. When she moved closer he could see that her eyes were lightly filmed with white.

"The gods directed my fishing boat to where you clung to a spar from your poor lost ship. The gods brought you back to life," said the man.

His poor lost ship. Jason frowned, trying to remember. He'd been on the _Alcestis_ , of course; he had always been on the _Alcestis_ , or so it had often seemed to him. His sickness had become worse, and his coughing had kept him from sleeping in the few hours allotted to him. He'd been so very tired, and then there had been a storm, and they had been made to row double shifts against the hissing and spitting of the restless wind that whipped the waves into towers of white foam and shook the timbers of their benches as though the _Alcestis_ had been caught in a giant's hand.

But no, he recalled now, they had made it into a makeshift harbor, had anchored in the lee of a wooded shore. The storm had passed and he had slept. He had dreamed of his mother's old slave baking bread, the yeasty scent rising and filling the air. The storm had passed, and he had slept, and dreamed, and then….

He didn't remember. He had woken from his dream, he remembered that. He had dreamed of stepping out of his little mallard-painted boat with Beric's hand in his….

"Beric," he said aloud.

"You are Beric? I am Morimaros, and she is Aia."

A pang went through him. "I am Jason. Beric is – was my friend." For if the _Alcestis_ had gone down, and he had been found clinging to her wreckage, surely Beric had been drowned in the furious sea. "He must have been lost, then, in the shipwreck," he said. Perhaps it was a blessing he did not remember it.

"I am sorry," said Aia. "Our son Moridubnos was lost at sea as well, many years ago."

"But we have found you, now," said Morimaros. "And those of us who are left may together remember those who were lost."

* * *

Their hearts still suffered from the long-ago loss of their son, that was evident, and now that they were no longer young, it was hard for them to do the work required to maintain their small cottage and garden on the shore near to Gesoriacum. When Jason had recovered enough that he could help, he did what he could. Aia was kind and it had been her herb-knowledge that had saved him, and so it was no hardship to carry the vegetables her nimble fingers picked from the vines, or to scrub the cooking-pots she could not see well enough to clean.

It was more difficult to work with Morimaros. It was not that he was a cruel man; he had not saved Jason from a desire to have a new son, or even a slave to help him with his work, but out of simple respect for life and the horror of his own loss. But after his time chained to the oars of the _Alcestis_ , Jason could not step onto Morimaros' small fishing boat without a shaft of sorrow and fear lancing through his heart. The sail carried them over the waves, and he closed his eyes against the memories.

"It is hard to remember your ship-mates," Morimaros had said, the first time. 

"It is hard to be on the sea again," Jason had said. And in truth it was hard. The gentle rocking swell and the spray on his face brought unhappy memories to mind: the torment of the Alcestis, the whip in the hand of Porcus the Overseer. The slaves chained to the other oars had been no friends of his. They had fought over the poor scraps of food, accused one another of slacking, of making the others do the work that all should have borne equally. There was nothing of those days he liked to remember, save Beric. But his old friend was gone, the loss a never-easing pain in his heart. 

Morimaros spoke to him as though he had been a free sailor, though Jason knew he must have seen the shackle-galls on his wrists and the scars of the whip on his back. For his part, he would not willingly talk of his time as a galley-slave in the Rhenus fleet. Better to look ahead, he told himself; to see himself not as the unfortunate slave chained to an oar, but as a free fisherman of Gaul. 

So each day they put to sea in Morimaros' small but sturdy skiff, and Jason helped the old man haul in nets of silver-sided fish, their scales shining in the sunlight, to be sold in the Gesoriacum market. He carried back to Aia the basket of the vegetables they had bought or traded for, along with the fish they kept for themselves, and he helped her in the kitchen, his young eyes making up for her failing ones. They treated him as they would have treated their son, and he returned their love as much as he was able.

But the brisk north wind on the Gaulish coast was not the soft, scented breeze of his home islands, and there were no olive trees here. It was a better life than he'd had on the galleys. But it was not the life he'd imagined for himself. In his heart he was a painter, not a fisherman.

One afternoon on the beach he found a stone that was a deep and lustrous orange-red, the color of the anemones that had carpeted the hillsides near his father's house. It had been polished by the waves to a smooth round shape that fit just inside his palm, comforting in its weight. He placed it near the hearth, where caught by the slanting sunlight it seemed to glow like the deep water of his home islands.

"What is that?" asked Aia that afternoon, pointing to the stone. Morimaros was sleeping, as the work of fishing and the market always tired him. "It's a pretty color."

"You can see it?" said Jason, startled.

"I see the color. It is much brighter than everything else." She gestured around the tiny house. "I cannot see small things, and even you and Morimaros are only the shapes of people to me, unless I stand very close. But I can see the color of things. Colors remind me of when I was young, and I could see everything in the world."

He took the stone and placed it into her hand. It was large for her small palm, and it shone through the gaps in her fingers. She smiled. "It feels as beautiful as it looks, all soft and smooth." Handing it back to him, she added, "If you find other bright things, you should bring them into the house to show me. I would like that."

"I would—" His voice cracked, and he was silent.

"Is something wrong?"

For a long moment, he said nothing. Then: "I was a painter, once. A long time ago."

"What did you paint?"

"What I saw. Birds winging across the bright sky. Flowers on the hills above the olive groves. Shimmering fish in the old men's nets."

"I should like you to paint them again, so I might see them. The birds fly too high for my eyes to make them out."

He imagined what he would paint for Aia. Wild geese, perhaps – they always drew his eye when they lifted in great noisy flocks to wing across the sky. Or perhaps the bird that he saw sometimes from Morimaros' skiff, the one that was like a small goose with a bright splash of scarlet on its throat. Scarlet was the color that Aia had noticed in the stone, that she could still see clearly against the darkness that gathered around her, and so maybe as her vision dimmed it would remain with her the longest. 

But he had no paint; and anyway, it had been a long time since he had painted. Though the shackle-galls had faded somewhat in the months since he'd been rescued from the sea, he still bore the scars on his wrists, along with a stiffness underneath the skin. His hands had become chapped and callused now from his time at the oars, his skin cracked from their constant immersion in sea-water, his arms padded with new muscle from the work of rowing and net-hauling.

So he only smiled. "I would paint the entire world for you," he said to her, and he placed the stone back beside the hearth, a splash of color to remind them both of beautiful things that they once had, that now were gone.

* * *

It had been early spring when the _Alcestis_ had made her final voyage. Now autumn was turning to winter, and the sea was often too wild for the fishing skiff. They set nets on the gray rocks of the beach, and traps in the forest for game; and when the wind howled from the north, shrieking like a wild beast, they closed themselves up in the house and mended the torn nets by fire-light. 

The Gesoriacum market had fewer goods in these cold months, and it was a long walk when it was too rough to go by boat to the harbor at Portus Itius. But Jason and Morimaros made the trip often, and sometimes, when the day was fine and not too cold, Aia came with them, walking carefully through the square with her hand on Jason's arm. It seemed as though there was something about winter that made the companionship of others seem more genial, that made it more desirable to be in a room drinking wine, laughing and talking with one's fellows. 

Sometimes they had fish to sell, or mussels gathered from the rocks below the tide line, and often they bought bread, or vegetables they had not been able to grow or store for themselves, or household goods to replace the ones they'd broken or worn out. But they always strolled through the market together, greeting their friends and looking over the things on offer.

On one such day Jason stopped at the booth of a seller of pigments, his wares spread across a cloth in a bright rainbow. He'd seen this man and his pots of color before, but he'd had only the common hues then: lead white, indigo, and ochre in brown and yellow and red. Now beside them were pots of a clear green and a dark green, and a vivid red, more brilliant than the red ochre, that Jason's practiced eye recognized as Egyptian kermes. 

"A beautiful red," he said wistfully. "Aia, can you see the red?"

"Oh, yes. It is like your stone."

Not very like, he thought, but like enough. The red throat of the painted sea-bird would catch the eye as that of the living sea-bird did; it would seem to leap off the wall as though it were taking wing into the gray sky above.

"A ship from Rome brought that, and the greens," said the seller of pigments. "Probably the last ship we'll see until spring."

"If you had that color, what would you paint?" asked Aia.

Jason smiled. He could see it in his mind's eye, the gray and white birds with their scarlet throats. "Sea-birds over the water, to bring them close enough for you to see."

"Then we shall buy you what you need, and you will make me my sea-birds."

"Is it that you paint?" said Morimaros, with surprise.

"I was not always a fisherman."

"That I knew – no, no, you are a fine help to me now! But I did not take you for a painter." 

Jason looked at his chapped, cracked hands. "I have not held a brush in many years."

"It will come back to you," said Aia. "It would be lovely to have sea-birds on the wall. And there is not so much for fishermen to do at this time of year."

"There is not much money, when there is not much to do," he said, but his heart was already yearning toward the indigo and the ochre, and the bright kermes red.

Morimaros put a hand on his shoulder. "There is enough for this."

It was not for his own pleasure, Jason told himself as he chose pigments, and a flask of mixing-oil, and two brushes, one coarse and one fine. Black he could make himself from wood burned in a hot fire, and the oil would last longer when mixed with the resin he would collect from the pine forest. He would paint for Aia, and for Morimaros. He could feel the bird in his heart, yearning to take shape. It would be a fine gift to the people who had taken him in and restored him to life.

* * *

Justinius had spoken from his heart when he had told Beric that he would be pleased to see him follow in the service of the Eagles. But over the year they spent working together on the Rhee Wall which now stood proudly against the battering of the sea, and on the farm on the low hill by the edge of the great marsh, he had grown to dread the day that Beric might leave him. Would the farm-work be enough to satisfy Beric, now that Justinius had taken his wooden foil and his leave of the Legion? 

As it turned out, it was not enough to satisfy either of them. After they had brought in the harvest and prepared the land for winter, they had little to do but the small daily tasks of ordinary life. But these were the tasks that Cordaella and Servius between them had managed while Justinius had labored on the sea-defenses, and although the work was easier when shared among them, it also did not fill the hours. And so in the following summer, after the fields had been cleared and planted and the days stretched long until harvest-time, when a messenger from the Commandant at Portus Lemanis came with a very interesting offer, it was in both their hearts to accept.

When they arrived in Gesoriacum they went straight to the Commandant at Portus Itius. "Ah," he said, looking up from his papers, "you are the drainer of marshes I have heard so much about. And this is your son?"

"Yes, my son," said Justinius, and did not feel the need, as he had the previous year when the Legate Cornelius Chlorus had asked him the same question, to qualify the relationship. "And my assistant. He has proven himself on the Rhee Wall."

"There is a great need for engineers in the Legion," said the Commandant, eyeing Beric with interest.

"Perhaps one day," said Beric courteously.

But for now they were only assisting the Commandant, who had plans to enlarge the natural harbor to accommodate a larger fleet, and did not have as skilled engineers among his own men. They would spend some time studying the tides and currents, how the water scoured the bank among the grass-bound dunes and where the weak spots were along the shingled shore. Then they would draw up plans for the men stationed here to put in place. Perhaps they would stay for a while, to ensure that all proceeded in good order; but they would be back in Britain before autumn. 

The next day they left the rooms that had been allotted to them and strolled along the harbor's edge with the optio who had been assigned to be their guide, a man named Fullo. The military port took up the largest part of the double-lobed harbor, and even though much of the fleet was doubtless at sea or ranging along the coasts, Justinius could see that there was a need for expansion. 

"There will be three times as many ships in the winter," confirmed Fullo. "And the Admiral wishes to expand, and move some of the fleet here from Dubris."

Justinius nodded. This harbor made a better base for protecting the routes between Gaul and Britain. "We have several options. We could build a new jetty to extend the protected water. Or use that area." He pointed to where a narrow spit of land divided the harbor into two basins; the unused area was much smaller, and from the shade of the water he marked that it was shallower as well. Two battered skiffs lay in the mud at its edge. "Is there a reason it hasn't been dredged?"

"That is the harbor the fishermen use." Fullo looked out to the open water. "They have been out on the sea since dawn, I suppose, and they'll be coming in soon to market their catch."

They continued their tour of the harbor and then down along the rocky shore which separated it from the open water, Justinius asking questions and Fullo answering them to the best of his knowledge. Beric was mostly silent, though when he did speak, it was always to ask for a clarification of something that had indeed been unclear, or to make a thoughtful remark. He was an intelligent young man, and Justinius was reminded again of how lucky he had been to find him, and how much he would miss him if he decided to try his fortune with the Eagles.

When they turned back toward the harbor, the fishing-boats were coming in. Several were already pulled up onto land, men pulling great armloads of shining silver fish from their nets and piling them into wooden carts, while others were still only dark shapes driving toward shore under curved sails.

Beside him, Beric suddenly stiffened. "The boat," he murmured, "it is a mallard."

Justinius was puzzled for a moment; then he saw that one of the boats on the shore was not painted, as the others were, with the simple dark protective tar that preserved the wooden strakes and filled the chinks between them, keeping the boat watertight. Instead it had bright splashes at its bow, stripes of green and indigo shimmering in the morning sun, white spots like eyes at each side of the bow. 

"Oh, that is Morimaros' skiff," said Fullo. "His son paints when he is not fishing. In the market you can see the painting he made for the pigment-seller's booth, flowers in every color. Blue cornflowers and red and white primroses real enough that they could fool a bee into landing on them."

"Then why is he a fisherman, rather than a painter?" asked Beric.

"Because he would not paint the Commandant's wife!" Fullo laughed. "He would rather paint birds and flowers than the curves of a woman, but I tell you, we already have enough birds and flowers here, and not enough women!"

Justinius noticed Beric's head turning this way and that, following the men with his eyes as though he was searching for one in particular. His jaw was set in a grim line, and Justinius placed a gentle hand on his shoulder. "You know a fisherman of Gesoriacum?" he asked. He waited until Fullo had gone a few steps ahead of them, and spoke quietly so his words would not carry, for if Beric had known a fisherman of Gesoriacum, it would have been in those dark days when he had been a slave. 

"I knew a painter who had a boat painted like a mallard," said Beric.

Justinius frowned. "In Rome?" Rome was very far from the Gaulish coast.

"On the _Alcestis_." Beric's voice was barely a whisper. "Jason."

Jason. It had been Jason's name that Beric cried out when he had woken in Justinius' house; Jason who had been his oar-mate for those miserable years, who had been whipped to death and thrown over the side. The story had poured out of Beric in an unstoppable flood, when he finally had told it.

Beric had loved Jason. He had attacked the man responsible for Jason's death, and had been flogged himself for his trouble. Justinius could see the wild flare of hope in Beric's eyes, could imagine the silent prayers to all the gods that must be running through his thoughts. 

It was as though a hand around his heart gave a sudden, sharp squeeze. Jason was dead, and Beric's spirit, now soaring with hope, would be torn to pieces, leaving him more bereft than before. Justinius wanted to put his arms around the young man he cared about as much as any man cared about his son, to protect him against the thoughtless world, to keep him from hurt and disappointment.

Yet Beric had been hurt already. Justinius had not been able to protect him from Glaucus, or from the _Alcestis_. He would protect him now, if he needed it; but it seemed to him that perhaps more than protection, Beric needed to know for himself whether he had any reason to hope.

"So let us to the market, then, and see these flowers," he said. "And perhaps we may find the painter as well."

* * *

It was early still for the market, not yet busy, and so Morimaros noticed the strangers walking from the square toward the spot on the shore where he and Jason were preparing their morning's catch. A man near his own age, and a younger man, both in Roman dress, though the youth had the look of the tribes about him. He caught his breath, suddenly afraid. Did they know Jason's past? Were they searching for him, intending to return him to slavery?

"Two Romans come this way," he said softly, as a warning. Jason bent his head lower over the basket of fish he was gutting, letting his hair fall in front of his face. 

It had been more than a year since he'd pulled the young man from the water, and Morimaros no longer worried about the soldiers of the Gesoriacum garrison. They knew him as a fisherman and painter, as Morimaros' adopted son. Morimaros and Aia had passed him off as the son of one of Aia's sisters, who had married a man from near Lutetia and gone with him to his village. "His father was gored by a wild boar, and his mother died of fever," Morimaros had said sadly, to those who asked. "So when Bitucus came to us, naturally we took him in."

No wreckage had come to shore, and no galley-slaves had been reported as missing, so the Commander of Portus Itius had no reason to take any special notice of the fisherman's nephew. When they were in company, Morimaros and Aia were careful to call Jason by the name they had given him, and Jason did his best to act the part he had assumed, a fisherman with a talent for painting, learned, he would say, from a Greek he'd known in Lutetia.

They never spoke about the days before he had come to them, but Morimaros knew that Jason would die rather than go back to the galleys. And the Romans would call Morimaros a criminal, were he to intervene, but he could not stand idly by if they tried to take him. The gods had taken Moridubnos, but then they had given them Jason, and now he was their son. Whatever happened, Morimaros would fight for him.

"Quickly, to the boat, before they can see you. Act as though you are getting something there I need."

Jason nodded quickly and slid off behind Morimaros toward the harbor, away from the Romans. Surely they would not recognize him from the back; he did not now look like the half-dead bit of flotsam Morimaros had pulled from the sea. On Aia's good cooking he had grown healthy, his gaunt frame filling out again, the strength of his wasted muscles returning. With his clothing hiding the scars from his slavery, his hair and beard worn in the local style, he looked like just another young man of the village.

Satisfied he had done what he could to protect Jason, he concentrated on the cold and slippery fish in his hands. He made a quick, straight cut with his knife, cleaned out the cavity with one smooth motion, and then laid the fish down and picked up another. Perhaps the men were only walking by.

But he heard their footsteps come louder and closer until they stopped beside him. "You are the fisherman Morimaros, whose son is the painter?"

It was a deep, quiet voice. Not angry, not impatient, as so many of the Romans were, but calm and ordinary. Morimaros' hand tightened on the handle of the gutting-knife as he looked up to see the speaker: a squat bull of a man, dark hair on his head and on his powerful arms. 

"It might be that I am. Who is it that asks?"

"I am Titus Drusus Justinius, a builder and an engineer."

"And what is it you want with Morimaros?"

"It is not he, but his son we seek. The one who painted the flowers on the paint-seller's market stall."

Morimaros tilted his head, considering. This Justinius was not wearing the helmet and armor of a soldier, but he had a military bearing. He had called himself an engineer, but perhaps that was a ruse.

"Please," said the young man at Justinius' side. He was small and dark, with a look on his face both eager and worried, like a dog unsure whether he is to be whipped or given a treat. "I am looking for a man I knew."

"And who are you?"

Justinius placed a hand on the younger man's shoulder. "He is my son." He frowned at Morimaros, studying his face; and in the deep lines and weather-beaten skin he must have seen what he was looking for, for he added: "He came to me a year ago from the sea, but Beric is my son. Perhaps you have such a son, as well."

Beric. Morimaros knew that name; it was the name Jason had called in his fever, when he had lain halfway between death and life. His breath caught in his throat. He looked at Beric, who was shifting from foot to foot with nervous energy, biting his lip, frowning. Finally he nodded. "I have such a son." 

Hope bloomed in Beric's face. "Then Jason lives?"

"He does," said Morimaros, and the young man's face turned radiant. "He is at our boat, in the fishing harbor there. The one –"

"The one painted like a mallard, yes! I knew it the instant I saw it!" And with the swiftness of youth Beric was running toward the fishing boats, threading through the other fishermen on his way to the harbor. Jason must have been watching, must have recognized Beric as he drew closer, for he leapt out of the boat and met Beric on the shore.

"I had a wife once, and a child," said Justinius quietly, as the two of them watched the young men embrace. "They died from the fever, long ago. Now Beric is all I have, and he is very dear to me."

It was both confession and promise, and Morimaros relaxed. Justinius would not take Jason to the authorities as a runaway slave. "Moridubnos was almost a man when he was taken from us. My wife and I love Jason as our own."

It was hard to tell whether Jason and Beric were laughing or crying as they walked arm-in-arm toward them. Their faces were wet, but their smiles were wide, their eyes shining, and they kept looking at each other and touching each other on the arm or shoulder, as though now that they were together nothing would ever wrench them apart.

"It is well, Morimaros!" called Jason as they approached. His voice was filled with clear joy. "I had thought – I had not dared to hope!"

"Nor I," said Beric, more soberly. "I was certain you were dead, until I saw that boat of yours." 

"Praise Mithras and all the gods," said Justinius. "It seems that both of you were fortunate, after all."

"It is we who are fortunate," said Morimaros. "We who have sons from the sea."

**Author's Note:**

> Gesoriacum is the Roman name for what is now Boulogne-Sur-Mer, France. It is thought to have been the location for Portus Itius, which was an important Roman naval base. 
> 
> The pigments sold in Gesoriacum are described in [Pigments Through the Ages](http://www.webexhibits.org/pigments/intro/antiquity.html). 'Kermes red' is what is now called carmine lake. 
> 
> The small goose-like sea bird with the red throat is the red-throated loon, Gavia stellata.


End file.
